Topic Description

Specific Challenge:

Health conditions linked to end-of-life issues, acute and chronic pain, life-threatening non-communicable diseases, late or long term side effects and consequences of diseases and their treatments impact quality of life and pose an immense societal and economic burden. Palliative[1], end-of-life and survivorship care benefits patients with malignant and non-malignant chronic health conditions, providing relief from their symptoms and improving their quality of life. From 38% to 74.0% of the affected population[2] is estimated to be in need of palliative care. While a variety of interventions are in use, these are often not adequately validated or adapted to the specific needs of patients affected with a specific chronic disease or with multimorbidities. Therefore a need exists to strengthen the evidence base for available effective interventions improving quality of life in the domains of palliative, end-of-life and survivorship care.

Scope:

Proposals should demonstrate, the effectiveness and cost-effectiveness of new, improved or specifically adapted pharmacological and/or non-pharmacological interventions to either relieve symptoms (e.g. pain) and suffering caused by life-threatening non-communicable diseases (including disabilities), or serious late and long-term side effects of disease treatments in patients and survivors, or symptoms that occur at the end of life. Randomised clinical trials or observational studies of new or improved patient and/or family centred[3] interventions, targeting children[4] and/or adults, should be considered for this topic. Proposals should give a sound feasibility assessment justified by available publications or preliminary results.

Proposals should prove the feasibility of integrating the proposed interventions in current pain management, palliative and/or end-of-life and/or survivorship care regimes and healthcare systems across Europe while taking into account the complex human aspects which are necessarily managed by such regimes and systems.

The proposals should address sex, gender, age and socio-economic factors in health and any other factors (e.g. ethical, familial, cultural considerations, including personal beliefs and religious perspectives, etc.) that could affect health equity.

The Commission considers that proposals requesting a contribution from the EU of between EUR 3 and 4 million would allow this specific challenge to be addressed appropriately. Nonetheless, this does not preclude submission and selection of proposals requesting other amounts.

Expected Impact:

Reduced symptom burden and suffering or improved well-being of patients in need of palliative, end-of-life or survivorship care and their formal and informal caregivers.

Improved clinical guidelines and policy recommendations with respect to pain management, palliative, end-of-life or survivorship care of patients with life-threatening non-communicable diseases or afflicted by late and long term side-effects of treatments.

Improved quality, effectiveness and cost-effectiveness of palliative, end-of-life or survivorship care services as well as access to care.

Reduced economic and wider societal burden arising from increased numbers of patients in need of palliative, end-of-life or survivorship care.

[1]According to WHO, palliative care is "an approach that improves the quality of life of patients and their families facing the problem associated with life threatening illness, through the prevention and relief of suffering by means of early identification and impeccable assessment and treatment of pain and other problems, physical, psychosocial and spiritual" (http://www.who.int/cancer/palliative/definition/en/).

[2]Morin et al. Estimating the need for palliative care at the population level: A cross-national study in 12 countries. Palliat Med. 2016

[3]Involving patients and their caregivers (families, volunteers, nurses and others), and taking their views and values into account in care decisions.

[4]According to WHO " A child is a person 19 years or younger unless national law defines a person to be an adult at an earlier age " (http://www.who.int/hiv/pub/guidelines/arv2013/intro/keyterms/en/).

Topic conditions and documents

1. Eligible countries:described in Annex A of the Work Programme.
A number of non-EU/non-Associated Countries that are not automatically eligible for funding have made specific provisions for making funding available for their participants in Horizon 2020 projects. See the information in the Online Manual.

2. Eligibility and admissibility conditions: described in Annex B and Annex C of the Work Programme.

Proposal page limits and layout: please refer to Part B of the proposal template in the submission system below.

3. Evaluation:

Evaluation criteria, scoring and thresholds are described in Annex H of the Work Programme.

Submission and evaluation processes are described in the Online Manual.

The thresholds for each criterion in a single stage process will be 4, 4 and 3. The cumulative threshold will be 12.The same applies to the second stage of the two-stage call for topics SC1-BHC15-2018, SC1-BHC01-2019, SC1-BHC02-2019, SC1-BHC14-2019, SC1-BHC19-2019, SC1-BHC22-2019, SC1-BHC25-2019

4. Indicative time for evaluation and grant agreements:

Information on the outcome of evaluation (single-stage call): maximum 5 months from the deadline for submission.
Signature of grant agreements: maximum 8 months from the deadline for submission.

Members of consortium are required to conclude a consortium agreement, in principle prior to the signature of the grant agreement.

7. Open access must be granted to all scientific publications resulting from Horizon 2020 actions.

Where relevant, proposals should also provide information on how the participants will manage the research data generated and/or collected during the project, such as details on what types of data the project will generate, whether and how this data will be exploited or made accessible for verification and re-use, and how it will be curated and preserved.

Open access to research data
The Open Research Data Pilot has been extended to cover all Horizon 2020 topics for which the submission is opened on 26 July 2016 or later. Projects funded under this topic will therefore by default provide open access to the research data they generate, except if they decide to opt-out under the conditions described in Annex L of the Work Programme. Projects can opt-out at any stage, that is both before and after the grant signature.

Note that the evaluation phase proposals will not be evaluated more favourably because they plan to open or share their data, and will not be penalised for opting out.

Open research data sharing applies to the data needed to validate the results presented in scientific publications. Additionally, projects can choose to make other data available open access and need to describe their approach in a Data Management Plan.

Projects need to create a Data Management Plan (DMP), except if they opt-out of making their research data open access. A first version of the DMP must be provided as an early deliverable within six months of the project and should be updated during the project as appropriate. The Commission already provides guidance documents, including a template for DMPs. See the Online Manual.

Eligibility of costs: costs related to data management and data sharing are eligible for reimbursement during the project duration.

The legal requirements for projects participating in this pilot are in the article 29.3 of the Model Grant Agreement.

Partner Search

LEARs, Account Administrators or self-registrants can publish partner requests for open and forthcoming topics after logging into the Participant Portal.

Submission Service

To access the Electronic Submission Service of the topic, please select the type of action that is most relevant to your proposal from the list below and click on the 'Start Submission' button. You will then be asked to confirm your choice of the type of action and topic, as these cannot be changed in the submission system. Upon confirmation you will be linked to the correct entry point.

To access existing draft proposals for this topic, please login to the Participant Portal and select the My Proposals page of the My Area section.